MIDDAY MARKETS: Warnings dent techs

More warnings kept techs underwater at midday Wednesday. The Nasdaq tumbled 41.95 to 3,823.69 and the Dow Jones industrial average shed 107.29 to 10,682.00.

The Inter@ctive Week @Net Index fell 3 to 521.47.

Sprint Corp. (NYSE: FON), down 1.44 to 26.81, warned Wednesday that third quarter earnings will be lower than expected.

ADC Telecommunications (Nasdaq: ADCT), down 2.5 to 32.38, is snapping up Broadband Access Systems for $2.25 billion, the companies said Wednesday. The move will fortify ADC's position in the market for Internet protocol based service delivery and help it meet the surge in demand for digital subscriber line networks.

National Information Consortium (NIC) (Nasdaq: EGOV) was down 2.44 to 5.38 after warning its third-quarter would fall short of estimates and announcing it will re-align its eGovernment applications and services businesses.

Hoping to expand its role as one of e-commerce's biggest players, Dell Computer Corp. (Nasdaq: DELL), up 0.75 to 37.06, announced it will launch its new B2B exchange, called Dell Marketplace, late next month.

Shares of Informix Corp. (Nasdaq: IFMX) plunged 13 percent, or 0.66 to 4.5 in morning trading, after the company cut third-quarter earnings estimates.

Application service provider Interliant Inc. (Nasdaq: INIT), up 1.59 to 10.75, will cut 300 jobs as part of a plan that it said will boost profitability.

Citing a lengthened sales cycle and funding issues at its dot-com customers, US Interactive Inc. (Nasdaq: USIT), down 1.31 to 2.69, warned of a third quarter revenue shortfall Wednesday, and announced layoffs and management shifts.

NetSilicon, Inc. (Nasdaq: NSIL) rose 2.5 to 26.5, or 10 percent after announcing a partnership with Red Hat, Inc. (Nasdaq: RHAT), down 0.75 to 20.25.

Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) fell 2.06 to 38.68, AOL (NYSE: AOL) shed 1.19 to 54.81 and Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) rose 1.21 to 110.38.

Among other leading tech issues: Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) dropped 0.38 to 61.63, Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) rose 0.62 to 61, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) was down 1.56 to 63.44, Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) shed 1.06 to 78.25, and Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW) was down 0.19 to 117.5.